


Insomnia

by WhatGatsby



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brother Feels, Bucky Feels, Hey look another Drabble, M/M, Oops surprise sister, Recovery, and everyone has ptsd, everyone has feels, look at this tragic backstory, post winter soldier sadness, these poor nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 12:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2309546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatGatsby/pseuds/WhatGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remember her in pieces, in shadows and light like a shattered mirror</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> Another sad in two days?? Who would have thought??  
> EVERYONE  
> Alright I so for those of you sitting here like 'who the hell is Becky', in the comic verse Bucky has a younger sister named Rebekah, who we know almost nothing about. This idea came to me last night and I went 'ah yes, sufficiently tragic.' So here you are!
> 
> Also I would like to make clear that the somewhat disjointed, stream of consciousness writing style is intentional, I wanted to give the piece a cluttered feeling so that the reader would get the feeling of being inside Bucky's mind. I promise I know what periods are and where punctuation goes!!

Sleeping through the night was something of a luxury that still eluded Bucky. It seemed that no matter how exhausted his body was, no matter how much he wanted to just lie down and not think for the love of god to just not think- his traitorous mind had other plans. On a good night he could get three, maybe four hours if he was drunk enough, but on bad nights he would sleep for maybe thirty minutes until the noises and the voices and the pain and the scratching in his head would jolt him awake with a pounding heart and drenched in sweat.

 

Natasha explained to him, in the monotone matter of fact way she had, that it was the lack of serum that was making him feel this way, like if he could claw his own skin off maybe he could fucking breathe, that he was essentially going through withdrawls- that his body didn't know how to function being out of cryo this long. He wonders how she knows this but when he asks she shrugs and looks away and something in the glint of her hazel eyes lets him know that it's not in his best interest to ask again.

It's best to let it work its way out of your system, she says. Poison doesn't leave all at once.

It's painful, she says.

Take this, she says, pouring him another drink.

Will it help, he asks

Who knows, she says.

So he shivers and he shakes and paces the floor in that goddam bedroom and curses at the blank walls until sunrise and when Steve asks how he slept he says "fine" quietly as he goes for his third cup of coffee and Steve knows that "fine" is a damn lie but he doesn't say anything, he doesn't want to scare him off, doesn't want him to disappear again like the time he asked too often if Bucky remembered this and this and this or anything at all really and Bucky left in the middle of the night because he _did_ remember sometimes but it wasn't right ,distorted, ( _Like looking in that funhouse mirror they saw when they were kids and Becky begged them to take her to the fair in October when the leaves had begun to turn shades of orange like their tickets and yellow like Becky's hair and red like the ribbon that held it up and tinges of pink like the cotton candy she ate too much of, so he had to carry her home piggy back style while she slept against him and who was Becky anyway?_ ) the edges were either too soft or too sharp and the words were too muffled like listening through a glass on the wall, like listening to a scream underwater.

He finds himself staring at a gravestone, hours later, as the sun cut a bloody path across the sky and he can't remember how or why or when he got here, only aware of the cold morning air on his skin and the name etched into the stone

**Rebekah Barnes-Mctavish**

**Born 1927 Died 1956**

He comes home after that, walks three miles and up six flights of stairs and doesn't say anything, doesn't acknowledge the concerned looks and the confused silence and goes straight to the bed and lies there, just lies there in his mud splattered clothes and he _remembers_

_The trees in the park make orderly, pristine lines against the sky, and Bucky focuses on them as they sit on that uncomfortable bench, Becky's ice cream melting in sticky lines across her hand and dripping onto her black dress, little white spots landing on her glossy black shoes, still slick from the dew on the cemetery grass._

_Her nose is red and raw and he says Hey Rudolph, nice shiner, as if they didn't just bury their parents, as if they weren't alone in this city that could swallow them whole, as if he didn't spend his last dollar on that damn ice cream she was letting melt into soup all over her hands._

_I'm gonna live to be a hundred, she announces suddenly._

_He laughs and it sounds like a cough._

_What? She snips. You don't think I can? I CAN. Her mouth is set in a grim line. And he can see the tears dancing in her eyes, the same shade of blue as his own, the same shade they inherited from their mother. Those ocean blue eyes that would never open again._

_He shrugged. Guess I'll live to be a hundred and ten, then. She glared at him._

_No one lives to be a hundred and ten, dummy._

_I have to. He poked her in the side. Gotta watch out for your stupid face, don't I?_

_She smiles a watery smile and he takes her little sticky hand and stands up and says Let's go home_

_And pretends, for her sake, that there is still a home to go to_.

He wakes up in the dark with a hand gripping his, and a voice calling his name, what used to be his name. He's been asleep for twelve hours, Steve says.  He doesn't respond for the longest time and Steve thinks that he's gone back to sleep until he hears Bucky whisper something to the empty air, and then again, and again until his voice is heavy and hoarse and tears stain his face.

She was twenty nine.

_She was twenty nine._

Steve's arms wrap around him and he wants the tell him to get out, wants to push him away and spit venom at him or maybe he doesn't, or maybe he just wants to hear Steve's heart beating, let it fall into tandem with his own, but all he can do, or think, or feel is

She was going to live to be a hundred.


End file.
